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The real life cultural context of the series
This page contains information about Finland in the 1990s in order to give relevant knowledge for the watchers of the series Witchcraft and occultism While Finland among other Nordic countries has been described among the most secular nations in the world and the belief in witchcraft has not been particularly high in international standards, it has never been difficult to find people who are deeply engaged in alternative medicine and various beliefs that are often called pseudo-scientific or superstitious. The role of esoteric and occult beliefs however, seems to be highly emphasized in the series. We assume this may reflect the personal interests of the author, who has been known to write about such themes also in his previous projects (a satirical approach of some projects on these topics suggests that the author does not take these issues dead seriously though we cannot rule out that he was not a believer of some sort himself). However, the Finnish demoscene contained at least some forgotten groups that actually were fascinated by occultism. Several related text files are known to have survived to our time. Satanism, satan worshipping, black metal Norway had the strongest black metal culture in the 1990s but it was also highly popular genre among the youth in Finland (and continues to be). Satan worshipping was strongly assumed to be connected with black metal music. In the 1990s it was perhaps the major phenomenon that was feared to destroy the youth. Almost every case alleged satan worshippers actually said that they were instead satanists, the followers of anti-christian individual philosophy that usually rejected the belief in supernatural creatures. In media it was often touted however, that satanism is merely a weaker form of satan worshipping and will actually lead its practitioners to worship satan. Both satanists and satan worshippers usually listened to black metal. Some arson cases and many acts of vandalism at graveyards that included kicking down gravestones were reported in the 1990s and later. Some TV programs on the subject matter were broadcast. The most famous event allegedly related to satan worshiping was a murder case in 1998 that happened in Hyvinkää. The gang of four (ages 16 - 23, including one female) spent evening with a victim in an apartment and then killed him while drinking kilju and listening to black metal. They later cut victim's body in pieces, ate some pieces and placed most of the them in trashcan. Two from the group received murder sentences. The main culprit was released in the early 2016 after serving his sentence. Interestingly, these people had been visiting some BBS (some of which were satanic) and attended to Boozembly which is an unoffical demoscene event that takes place in a forest near Assembly demoscene & gaming party. They had some sort of group of their own which did not release demoscene products however, but concentrated just in BBS communication. No surprisingly, killers denied being satan worshippers and claimed being satanists. Political groups mentioned in the series The Centre Party (Keskusta) was (and is) one of the major parties in the multi party political system. It used to be called Agrarian League (1908-1965) and it continues to be the representative of rural interest groups. It has a firm support base in many rural municipalities where it can be a totally dominating force in the local political life and in municipal councils. The Centre Party is classified usually as a right-wing party. While the party is nominally liberal, it already in the 1990s rather had become the most conservative of major Finnish parties (taking this role from Coalition party which in contrast is a more urban right-wing party). Party's most visible politician in the 1990s was perhaps prime minister Esko Aho who emphasized "traditional family values" and politics supporting families during his (non successful) presidential campaign. Communists had been participating in parliamentary politics under the auspices of SKDL ''in the 1980s. SKDL was the coalition of groups which were positioned to left from Social Democrats (''SDP ''party). During the 1980s groups calling themselves communists left SKDL whereas SKDL was turned into a new non-communist left party (''Vasemmistoliitto, The Left Federation) in 1990. Thus when the 1990s arrived, communist parties had become marginalized in Finnish politics. They did not have representation in the parliament though they had some representatives in municipal councils. In any case, many old communists did not give up but continued in the path they had chosen despite of the society around them often tended to see them as obstinate persons stuck in the past.